It’s Easter. You’ve got a bit more time to relax and scroll through Facebook or Twitter and hopefully you’re taking the time to recharge before Tuesday comes around again.
With that in mind, I thought I’d give you a snapshot of a day in the life of one of the girls we support. We’ll call her Priti.
Priti lives a long, long way out of town in rural Fiji and as a result one of her barriers to staying in school was the cost of everyday travel. Combined with fees, uniform, shoes and more shoes to cope with the amount of walking she does on dirt roads and through the mud, things became a challenge for mum and dad.
Our coordinator Urmila, set her up with a term pass with the local bus company, sorted her fees and uniform expenses and organised some honey bee boxes for mum and dad to harvest and sell, and some supplemental seedlings for their big veggie patch that needed some loving. They are now doing really well.
Priti gets up at 4am (that’s right kids) every morning to prepare for her day. I thought this was fairly outstanding until she mentioned that during exam weeks she is up at 3am to study by kerosine lamp (see pic above). Mum prepares roti and tea in their kitchen for breakfast, then Priti prepares for the 1.5 hour trip to school.
Priti uses the bathroom then washes in the river that you can see behind her cheeky brother here.
Then it’s off to school.
Priti works hard and understands the value of education. She knows there is no other way for her achieve her goals and to do well. She hopes to be an accountant and will have to move a long way from home for tertiary study and find her way in a city or regional area that may as well be New York to her, lights, traffic, people everywhere.
One of the ways that we work with girls in rural areas is to help prepare them for this transition and move forward. We want to set them up to succeed, we all know the power that fear of the unknown can have over us.
These girls are a constant inspiration to us. Their determination to keep going against all odds and break the cycles of poverty they were born into is breathtaking!
We’d love you to become part of their journey…
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Warmly,
Jane for team ‘a Girl & her world’